The Moscow Circus billed Valís
Uncle John
as
"The Strongest Man in the World."
People called
John"TheRussian Bear"
because of his fierce,raw power and
awesome muscles. He won numerous medals for his stupendous
strength and acrobatic feats.

Well, Val Vasilef has done all of the BodyBuilding Achievmentsand more. This Mr.
America winner holds over 80 bodybuilding,
power and
Olympicweightlifting awards. So how did he
pull it off?

Val credits his Uncle
John, a Russian known as
the USSR's greatest strong man, for
inspiring him to start doing strength feats when
he was only 11.

Along with his 13-year-old
brother, Bob, Val would do handstands
and other acrobatic stunts for crowds that would gather to watch. Soon he won swimming and diving medals.

"We heard the stories about our uncle,"
Val says. "We were really into physical fitness ó
it was just our heritage."

The
Vasilef boys had no weights to use, so they improvised. "We made up two
buckets of cement and put a water pipe in between," Vasilef recalls.
Using this homemade barbell, young Val
struggled to lift 110 lbs over his head just one time.

"But as we got stronger, we
were able to lift it
10 times," Val says. "Then I started lifting one-handed until I progressed to
240 pounds on a standard barbell set when I was 19." His
one-handed lift of this incredibly heavy poundage has yet to be
equaled by anyone at Val's body weight of 185.

Read
more about how Val Vasilef turned his uncle's legacy into a powerful
line of bodybuilding products that really work (in training
program to bulk up muscles).